


the oak and the ash

by OfShoesAndShips



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Black Joan - Freeform, Other, also contains dialect, death mention, it's barely shippy at all, mention of potential child abuse, not from joan, so if yall come to me saying that i should have said was instead of were you're wrong, t rated for subject matter not shippiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 11:23:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13363689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfShoesAndShips/pseuds/OfShoesAndShips
Summary: John opens up about his mother.





	the oak and the ash

**Author's Note:**

> I was making jam tarts at an ungodly hour this morning and acting out a conversation between John (Ch) and Emma while I did the pastry. It became this. 
> 
> Beta'd by my lovely Bookhobbit. Shap is a northern word that escapes definition.

The evening comes in slow these days. Hills behind them and sunset ahead, they are preserved in long lingering sunlight like flies in amber. The house is modest, though not too low; the upper rooms have sunlight still later, catching the very last of it with their simple whitewashed walls. Downstairs, oak panels and light wallpaper toy with the shades of sunset; shadow here, golden there. It is not like London. There, streets upon streets steal the dregs of light before you even know they are there for the catching, and so night comes on as soon as afternoon ends. Emma has taken to these twilights; sitting in the teacher’s parlour as late as sense allows her, stretched out in a green armchair bred more for lasting comfort than the taste of a season. Sometimes she reads - books of ethics, books of philosophy, books of law. Novels are for later, for bed and candlelight; evenings, her mind bites still, churned up by lessons and the day’s doing. She had tried, at first, to sew; but tapestry was only ever a means to a very specific end and her hands rebel now from needle and thread. This evening, however, she doesn’t read. The students are home for the holidays and so her mind is more restful, and she is enjoying just the sunlight on the leaded glass and the patterns dust makes in the air. A soft shawl around her shoulders that she toys with as she stares out to the green and flowered country beyond, stockinged feet curled around the edge of the chair. She is half in a reverie, though one without an edge of sleep; lost in contemplation, not misery. The house is very quiet, at this time of night, especially since Arabella returned to Italy with Flora; Bell will be back soon, or so she says in her letters, and when she is Emma will have company in her long evenings, but for now she is, for the most part, left to her own easy devices. John will not be back from the village until Vinculus decides he is ready - which is not likely to be soon – and John – she laughs aloud, unused to it still – the other John is like as not fussing over next term’s classes upstairs in his study. 

She stretches, grasping the softness of her shawl in one hand so that it doesn’t slide off her as she arches her back and her other arm falls around the back of the chair.

  
There is a sigh of breath and an unrhythmic stirring of feet; startled, she looks around and sees John, just inside the door.

  
“Vinculus has had his fill already?” she asks.

  
He smiles his long tree-root smile and walks over to the seat opposite hers. He sits down, rolls his bad shoulder with the faintest grimace. She gets the impression even that is an exaggeration, a tease. He never mentions it otherwise, and so it makes her smile.

  
“He found himself a young lady, and I am not so dedicated to chaperoning that I felt like accompanying them.”

  
“It’s not as though it’s a number to which you are unaccustomed,” she says, using a dryness she has stolen from him.

  
He laughs, rolls his shoulder again and stretches out his legs. She smiles, reaches with her toes to graze his ankle.

  
Last time he was here, he had left a book on the small table by the chair; he picks it up now and reopens it, flicks through the pages until his finds his place. When she had come in she’d glanced at it; but she has had enough of hubristic men playing God in her life. When John finishes it, she will ask him if the young Genevan genius gets his comeuppance; she might consider it, then.

  
She sighs a little and lets her eyes settle on him, rather than the view through the window. He is cast a little in shadow, as he likes it, but his scar stands out silver in his pale brown skin, catching a little of the light that flows around the edges of the chair. His long lashes, too, catch the light; with his eyes cast down on his book and dressed only in breeches and shirtsleeves, he looks softer than he normally does. She tips her head a little sideways and frowns at him; it might be a trick of the position and dress but he looks younger than he did. Not young, of course. It seems to her that he’s the kind of man who never did look young. But younger. Perhaps the air agrees with him here. He turns a page, the soft sound loud in the space, and she sees the flicker of his tongue dampening his lip.

  
“Enjoying the view?” he asks, without lifting his eyes from the page, in that same stolen dry voice.

  
“Yes.”

  
He laughs again and she smiles, gratified. He looks up and catches her eye, and then slowly puts his book aside. There is a strange expression in his eyes, though not a sad one. Wistful, perhaps. She looks away from him, made the faintest bit self-conscious by it. Instead she looks past him to the bookshelves set into the wall, the way the golden lettering of their spines dances in the retreating sun. She will need to call for candles soon, or go herself; John ought keep the weight off his feet, for she could hear his limp earlier and there is no necessity now for him to exacerbate it.

  
“You remind me of my mother, sometimes,” he says, and her gaze snaps back to him.

  
“Is that a compliment?”

  
“Well, I’m not saying the’ look like an old woman.”

  
“Good,” she says, and sniffs in false indignation.

  
He doesn’t speak for a moment. “Anyroad, she were about your age when she died.”

  
She’s about to snip about his choice of topics, and then she sees the expression on his face. Soft, distant. She knows him well enough to know that he would have been aware of the words as he spoke them, but he is unused to guarding his words to keep from giving offence. She finds his lack of decorum freeing, most days, and so she refuses to take offence now. Besides, she wants to know what she could possibly have in common with John’s mother, and she’s concerned that if she snips they’ll go off topic and he’ll never tell her. She’s about to ask direct when he speaks again.

  
“Made of steel, my mother was,” he says, “Only other person I’ve known in all my life with enough grasp on theirself to survive like you did.”

  
“Oh, I don’t know,” she starts, thinking he’s all too self-possessed himself, thinking she doesn’t often feel much like steel.

  
“I’d say I lost myself, once or twice,” he says, catching her thoughts just from her few words, “But she and you – nah, you’re neither of you that kind.”

  
“What was she like?” Emma asks, as his gaze slides off her face and something like sorrow starts to twist his mouth, “Other than steel.”

  
His gaze slips back to her, and he smiles a little. “Imagine me, but five foot on a good day.”

  
She bursts out laughing. “Not room for much self-possession.”

  
He snorts. “She had more shap to her than armies have. Napoleon wouldn’t have lasted a minute if the government had sent her in place of their battalions.”

  
He’s quiet, and she imagines it; a small woman swamped by her own skirts, facing down the French army. She looks at John, really looks at him, and all of a sudden finds it startlingly plausible.

  
“There were six of us,” he says.

  
“Six?”

  
“Children. All but me adopted.”

  
“Oh, I see.”

  
He brushes his hair out of his face, having forgone his usual queue. His mouth opens, and then closes. “She was thirty-two,” he says, softly.

  
“And you?”

  
“About two months shy of thirteen.”

  
Emma frowns and does a little maths in her head. She knows his birthday – she’d needed it for a contract not so long ago – and then her mouth falls just a little slack and she almost whispers _oh_. No wonder he'd thought of it today.

  
“Tell me more?” she asks instead, wanting him to smile again.

  
He settles better in the chair, takes his pipe out of his pocket and then puts it back again in deference to her lungs.

  
“She was ambitious,” he says, slowly, and then words start to come out in an uncharacteristic jumble, “Sharp, angry. Had a loud, quick temper – not with us, not like that, but with anyone old enough to stand it. Every time something about the world vexed her she’d say she owed John Uskglass a piece of her mind - half of Yorkshire lived in fear of her mind.” He stops then, clears his throat.

  
Emma would have thought him embarrassed at how ill-composedly he’d spoken, but John is never embarrassed. She’s beginning to think it a habit he got from his mother.

  
He licks his lip and speaks again, slower now. “She had long hair,” he starts, “Always had mending in her hands, spoke with the last of her grandfather’s accent – India,” he adds, and she nods. She’s heard it, though rarely, in Childermass’s own voice, tangled with the flat Yorkshire vowels.

  
“What about your father?” She doesn’t mean to derail him, but she’s fascinated now, and wants a full picture.

  
“Never knew him. But I’m paler than my mother and only most of my face is hers.”

  
“What was his name?”

  
He laughs. “My mother’d’ve forgotten that by the time he paid his fee.”

  
There’s no sharpness in his tone, nothing but soft amusement, but she blushes slightly anyway. Of course, she’d known John was born poor, but somehow the awareness of what that likely meant for his mother had escaped her. He’s looking at her now, a little analytically. Perhaps watching for judgement, ready to jump to his mother’s defence. Emma meets his look with a soft smile.

  
“The best thing to do, with most men,” she says, and he shakes his head in amusement.

  
“I knew you were like her.”

  
“Is that how she died?” Emma asks.

  
“Diseases of her profession? No. Murdered a man, she did.”

  
Emma feels her eyes widen, in surprise. “How?”

  
John breathes in, shifts again in his seat. It’s not often he looks so visibly unsettled, and Emma regrets asking.

  
“She’d been in trouble for a while,” he says, his voice soft and far away. He sounds almost as if he’s quoting someone else’s explanation, “Didn’t realise how deep until a long while after. Ma, she never quite managed to pull herself out of debt, and it had started to catch up to her then. Owed some people money, some people she owed stolen goods, others figured she owed them other things. She’d kept them away for a long time but we’d had a hard spell, and no amount of wit can drag you out of debt when you’re that deep. She were a sharp hand at cards, Ma was, prided herself on it – though she prided herself on most things-”

  
“Nothing at all like you, then.”

  
“Aye. And there were this card game a few of them played – the men she owed. A lot of money going back and forth. Enough to set us up, all of us. But she hadn’t the money to get in. I remember she sold her hair to the wigmakers a few streets down to get in and she won’t have done that ‘less she had to – vain she was, over her hair.

  
“So she got in to the card game, then – said to them, if she won she’d get her debts wiped, every last one. They agreed to that. But she were desperate and they knew it so they had her in a corner – if she won, her debts were wiped. If she lost, they were owed twice over.”

  
He blinks, a little quick, and swallows. There’s a faint edge of darkness in his eyes. He stumbles over at attempt at the next sentence and loosens his cravat with obviously-faked carelessness.

  
“She lost,” Emma says, finding her own voice rough.

  
“Aye,” he clears his throat, “And next day the men sent a bailiff round. I remember watching from the window, seeing them there in the street. He towered over her. She told him if he just waited two days she could get the money together. Two days and it’d all be over and done with. But he wouldn’t let her. Said the men who hired him wanted the money before end of day. Said if she didn’t give it him then and there,” John falters, “He’d have it out of the kids instead. I remember she froze, then. I’d never seen her like that, so still. Then she pulls a pistol out of her pocket and shoots him in the head. Right there, on our doorstep, in the middle of the street in plain daylight.”

  
It takes him a moment to realise what he’s said, and then he looks at her. She meets his gaze and he laughs a little, in a worn kind of way, just under his breath.

  
“She’d have liked you,” he says, recovering his voice.

  
“I think I’d have liked her. I like her son, after all.”

  
“God knows why.”

  
There’s a soft noise of censure from the doorway and they both look around to see their John, smiling gently. The very last of the sunlight is reflecting in his soft brown eyes.

  
“None of that,” he says lightly, coming in and leaning himself against John’s chair, “We can’t both be wrong.”

  
“You’d be surprised by how many people can be wrong at once.”

  
John laughs, and gently runs his hand through the other John's hair. He looks at Emma, and they smile at each other.

  
“How much did you hear?” John asks him.

  
“Enough,” he says, rubbing the back of John’s neck, “Would you like some brandy?”

  
John nods and he pushes away from leaning against the chair to go over to the cabinet in the corner where they keep their better poisons. He pours out three glasses and brings them over, balancing all three between his fine, long fingers. Emma takes hers gently, John with a studied ease that suggests he wants to snatch it.

  
“To Joan Childermass,” John says, holding out his drink with one hand and tangling the fingers of his other hand back in John’s long hair. Emma glances up at him, startled that he knows her name. He winks.

  
“To Joan,” the other two say together, and Emma reaches out, rests her foot on John’s calf. 


End file.
